A TELECONFERENCING SYSTEM CAPABLE OF MULTIPLE PERSON EYE CONTACT (MPEC) USING HALF MIRRORS AND CAMERAS PLACED AT COMMON POINTS OF EXTENDED LINES OF GAZE

In this paper a novel method of providing eye contact for multiple par ticipants in a teleconferencing system is presented, This method propo ses a simple idea to fulfill the requirement for eye contact, for two or more local and remote participants simultaneously, by using half mi rrors and cameras placed at the common points of the extended lines of gaze of each participant, In contrast to the commonly available one t o one eye contact video phone systems, which also use half mirrors, th e proposed system has the advantage of serving more than one person at a given location, hence named Multiple Person Eye Contact (MPEC) tele conferencing system, We observed the resultant images by using a preli minary experiment and also building a prototype system, The results fr om both of these experiments proved the merits of the proposed idea. O ne of the main features of this system is that, it gives any participa nt, a feeling of ''being looked at'' if any remote participant is actu ally gazing at him, On the other hand if none of the remote participan ts are looking at him, then he gets the feeling of ''not being looked at,'' which is also extremely important for effective inter personal c ommunication, Furthermore, this system preserves the spatial continuit y of neighboring participants, since all the participants at a given l ocation are captured by each,ideo camera.